THE BIKOLANO SENSIBILITY IN MERLINDA BOBIS’S WHITE TURTLE
Keywords:
Bikolano sensibility, hybridity, multiplicity, abrogation and appropriation of language, postcolonialismAbstract
This paper attempts to resolve the questions of ten selected short stories in White Turtle as representation of postcolonial literature - how these stories subvert the domination of imperial culture and assert the consciousness of Bikolano sensibility thereby liberating the colonized subject from Western hegemony. The short stories are described as having emerged out of the experience of colonization and readings of the texts explore the recurrent themes of hybridity, ambivalence and displacement which foreground the tension between the colonizers and the colonized stereotypes. The abrogation and appropriation of the English language to english language, and the writer’s use of magical metaphor and metonymy creatively reconstruct the identity of both the colonizer and colonized. The content – thematic and symptomatic readings reveal the different postcolonial themes that appear in different guises throughout the ten selected short stories by Merlinda Bobis – from the hybridity and language and food that emerge from the melding of different cultures through the appropriated english language as a postcolonial tool in writing back to the Center. Finally, this paper posits a response to the phenomenon, which has been inaccessible to the growing introspective consciousness of the Bikolanos in liberating the Bikol aesthetics and pragmatics through mythmaking and open perception of reality.
Downloads
References
Almario, V. (2006). Pag-unawa sa ating pagtula: Pagsusuri at kasaysayan ng panulaang Filipino. Manila: Anvil Publishing, Inc.
Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., & Tiffin, H. (1989). The empire writes back: theory and practice in post-colonial literatures. London and New York: Routledge.
Baldick, C. (1990). The concise Oxford dictionary of literary terms. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. London and New York: Routledge.
Bhabha, H. (1995). Signs Taken for Wonder. In G. G. Bill Ashcroft, Post-colonial studies reader. London and New York: Routledge.
Bhabha, H. (1995). Translator Translated. 80-84. (W. Mitchell, Interviewer)
Bhabha, H. (1996). Caliban Speaks to Prospero: Cultural Identity and the Crisis of Representation. In P. Mongia, Mariani, Critical Fictions, Contemporary post colonial theory: A reader (p. 63). New York: Hodder Headline Group.
Bobis, M. (1999). White Turtle. Manila: De La Salle University Press.
Bobis, M. (2001). Myth and mythologizing in White Turtle. Trading in Imagination. Power House Museum.
Bobis, M. (2001). Trading in Imagination. Power House Museum.
Interview Notes on Merlinda Bobis, F. 1. (2002).
